


wait a few trillion years, the guilt will fade

by dandelioness



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Good Omens Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:14:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24526702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelioness/pseuds/dandelioness
Summary: Literally just the opening scene of Pratchett and Gaiman'sGood Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Chidi and Eleanor style.
Relationships: Chidi Anagonye & Eleanor Shellstrop, Chidi Anagonye/Eleanor Shellstrop
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	wait a few trillion years, the guilt will fade

_Late October, 4004 BC_

  
It was a nice day.

All the days had been nice. There'd been rather more than seven of them so far, but as no one had quite gotten the hang of _linear time_ yet, it was difficult to say more than that. But they had been nice, these days. The sky was blue and the Garden was lush and rain hadn't been invented yet. Unfortunately, the dark clouds amassing east of Eden suggested that the new world was soon to experience its first storm, and it was going to be a big one. On the massive stone wall surrounding the Garden, an angel watched the gathering darkness and a serpent slithered toward him, occasionally flicking out her tongue for the first taste of lightning on the air.

The angel was the Guardian of the Eastern Gate — or, he had been before the Garden's two tenants had been summarily dismissed from its bounds hours before. He wasn't exactly sure _what_ he was Guardian of now. The angel was tall and broad-shouldered, as dark as Adam and Eve, with a stubby sort of nose and terribly tense posture. There was something about him that gave the impression his immaculate white robes were actually a horrible argyle sweater vest, of the kind that wouldn’t be invented for several millennia. He just had that kind of face. The impression was somehow not lessened by the great, shining black raven’s wings that arced over his head, feathers ruffling slightly in the changing breeze.

The serpent on the wall beside him was less immediately impressive visually, although frankly rather larger than she had any right to be — nearly ten feet of gold and cream scales. Her eyes were wide and round and bright, a poisonous yellow split by narrow slits of pupils, and far more intelligent than one might expect from a serpent. For a moment[1], the two were silent, and the only sound was the newly mournful howl of the wind from the East.

“Well. That did _not_ go over well,” the serpent said at last, and coiled herself in a pile near the angel’s feet.

“It really, _really_ didn’t,” the angel agreed, wringing his hands anxiously. His _empty_ hands, the serpent noted with interest.

“Kinda seems like overkill to me,” the serpent, whose name was Shellstrop, continued. “I mean, jeez. It’s their first offense, you know? Come on, dude.”

The angel, whose name was Chidi, looked sidelong at the serpent with an expression that was a nervous mix of disbelief and disapproval. “It was literally the _one_ rule,” he pointed out. “Look, here’s Paradise! It’s all yours, just please don’t eat the apples.”

Shellstrop wriggled in a limbless rendition of a shrug. “Aw, c’mon, angel. The tree was _right there_ , middle of the Garden. If the Big Guy really cared that much, He could’ve put it, I dunno, on the moon or something, right?” Chidi didn’t have a counterargument prepared for that, so elected to keep quiet. When Shellstrop realized the angel wasn't going to answer, she huffed a little sound of amusement. A minute or so passed before she continued contemplatively, “You know, I can’t actually figure out what’s so _bad_ about knowing the difference between right and wrong anyway. You’d think it would just make it easier for them to do the right thing. I mean, sure woulda been helpful if they’d told _us_ about Good and Bad before they kicked half of us out, am I right?”

Chidi rather suspected that she was, which made him nervous. Well. More nervous.

Shellstrop didn’t seem to notice; or, if she did, didn't particularly care. She was pretty self-centered, for a serpent. She did, however, care about those empty hands the angel kept twisting together anxiously. Raising her head, and then quite a length of neck (body?), from her coil, Shellstrop squinted up at the angel.

“Didn’t you have a sword?”

“Um,” said Chidi.

If serpents could grin, Shellstrop would have.

“Well, see, uh,” said Chidi.

Shellstrop seriously considered trying out a human shape just so she could grin at the angel fumbling for words. The only thing that stopped her was that she didn't want to distract the angel from coming up with an answer, because she had the feeling it was going to be good. Well, bad. Well, not _Good_ , at the very least.

“I — yes, yes I do. I mean, I did.” Chidi cleared his throat uncomfortably, and his gaze flickered between Shellstrop and the distant, desert world outside the walls of Eden. Shellstrop followed his gaze, scanning the horizon for...whatever was out there. Endless sand and burgeoning storm clouds and, somewhere, the two exiled humans.

“Oh man, did you lose it already? Big Guy’s not gonna be a fan of that,” Shellstrop sing-songed at the angel, glee clear in her voice.

“I really wish you wouldn’t refer to the Almighty as the _Big Guy_ ,” Chidi grumbled. “It’s — it’s disrespectful.”

Shellstrop snorted a strange, snakey snort. “I’m a demon, bud. I’m pretty sure I’m like, obligated to be disrespectful now. Anyway, you’re avoiding the question. How d’you lose a flaming sword? It was literally _on fire_. Kinda hard to miss.”

“I didn’t _lose_ it!” Chidi snapped. He glanced nervously at the horizon again. “I — fine, if you must know, I gave it away.”

“You did _what_?” Shellstrop was absolutely delighted. This was better — worse — whatever — than she could have expected. She swayed up and closer to the angel, her snout almost resting on his shoulder[2].

“I gave it away!” the angel repeated, his voice pitching upwards with anxiety. “It’s just, oh goodness. It was — look, it’s _cold_ out there, and we don’t know what’s out there, and, and she’s _expecting_ already, and really it wouldn’t have been _right_ to leave them in the wilderness without _something_.” He turned and stared at Shellstrop, whose face was now on level with his own, his eyebrows drawn together in agony. “Right? Oh God, I hope I didn’t do the wrong thing. _Did_ I do the wrong thing?”

Shellstrop would have rolled her eyes, had she been able. Human shape was sounding more appealing by the minute. “Oh, you’re an _angel_ ,” she said in saccharine tones. “I don’t think you can do the wrong thing.”

“Oh, really?” Chidi replied, face brightening momentarily at the reassurance.

“ _No_ , dingus!” Shellstrop said, swaying forward to emphasize her reprimand by bopping him on the shoulder with her snout. “Seriously? If angels couldn’t do wrong, I’d still be hanging out in the clouds with your lot, bored out of my blessed mind. Obviously angels can do the wrong thing. Best hope the _Big Guy_ doesn’t take notice, bud. Don’t think you’d take well to the pool of boiling sulfur.” No one did, really. That was rather the point of Hell. Still, this angel seemed particularly ill-suited to it.

As if in confirmation, Chidi made a pathetic, nonverbal noise of concern and looked away from her. Shellstrop continued mercilessly, though her tone began to fade to something more like curiosity than cruelty.

“Although I can’t help but wonder if I did the _right_ thing, you know? With the apple.” Thunder rumbled, and the first drops of rain began to fall on distant desert sands. Without turning his worried gaze from the infinite unknown world, Chidi held his arm out toward Shellstrop, an apparently unconscious offer of shelter. After only a moment of hesitation, the serpent began to wind herself around the proffered limb, climbing up and away from the wall. Up and up, until the bulk of her was draped over the angel’s shoulders, with her head nestled just under his chin. Chidi absentmindedly ran his hands over the smooth scales as, together, they watched the storm move in. “Demon can get in a lot of trouble, I think,” Shellstrop finished quietly. “Doing the right thing.”

On the horizon, there was a faint flicker of light. Something that might have been lightning, but might have been a flame.

“Funny if we both got it wrong, huh?” Shellstrop said, nudging Chidi’s chin with her own. “If I did the right thing, and you did the wrong one?”

Chidi made a strangled sort of sound at that, one Shellstrop would not be able to describe for almost six thousand years. It would not be until the first time she heard a fork get caught in a garbage disposal that she would hear something comparable to Chidi's noises of distress.

“No,” the angel said. “No, it really, _really_ wouldn’t.”

The thunder came again, rumbling closer now, and a grey curtain of rain swept across the desert. As the first drops reached the angel and the demon on the wall of Eden, the angel raised his wings to shelter them both, and the demon curled more snugly around the angel’s torso and shoulders. The demon was watching the storm with the kind of fascination that would someday cause rubbernecking traffic jams on the highway. The angel was inventing the nervous stomachache.

“Meh,” said Shellstrop, and lightning struck the empty desert before them. “Agree to disagree.”

[1] Or several moments — again, that whole bit with linear time was still a little...woobly.

[2] If any serpent that _wasn't_ a demon tried this, it would likely collapse under the weight of its own spinal column. It simply hadn't occurred to Shellstrop that bodies shouldn't work like that, so hers _did_ work like that.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of ideas for this AU, but don't know if I'll ever get around to actually writing them, so I'm just posting this as a brief one-shot for right now.
> 
> Title is something Chidi says in the s2 episode "Existential Crisis."


End file.
